Monday, May 20, 2013

Harvest Monday 20 May 2013

Well, it had to happen sometime. I was able to cut my first harvest of salad greens. The greens below included New Red Fire, Butercrunch, Green Ice, Forellenschluss, escarole, endive, and some herbs. It was nice to finally have a salad with my own lettuces.

 

first_harvest

 

The garden seems to be in slow motion. The lettuce went into the garden on April 1 and Sunday was May 20. That is seven weeks to first cutting. It has been dry and cold at night but the lettuce has been watered regularly. I keep hoping that the garden is going to shift into high gear soon. We have a week of warm, rainy weather coming up and maybe that will do it. Tomatoes will go in the end of next week but peppers and eggplant will wait a few more weeks along with the bush beans.

 

garden_05192013

 

However, there was indeed activity at the Bolton Community Gardens on Sunday even if it wasn’t happening in my own plot. A local troop of Girl Scouts has a plot they use to grow food for the local food pantry. Last year after a day of mucking out weeds, they spied my Square Foot Garden and asked why they couldn’t have one. They spent the winter planning and raising funds and now are putting in their own raised beds, using the Square Foot Gardening method. They used my blog articles on constructing my beds to plan and build their own. They built and filled 5 beds and weeded their plot in one day with just Girl Power! I’ll have another post  with more details later.

 

GS_raised_beds

 

That’s what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

12 comments:

  1. Hooray for girl power!!!!! Wishing your girl scots troop success.
    Bet that first salad green harvest was the best you ever tasted. I too am waiting for my garden to shift into high gear.

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    1. It was very good. We are supposed to get 4 days of rain starting tomorrow, so that should help.

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  2. How lovely that you were an inspiration to the girls and hooray for them in doing their good work while learning to garden at the same time (and having fun at it too I would wager). Your lettuce/greens harvest looks delicious. We have had a good spring here so far but very dry (unusual for us) so I am having to pay attention to watering early on this season.

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    1. The square foot gardening technique is the inspiration, not me. I'm just the maintenance man that does the weeding and watering, since it's been very dry here as well.

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  3. Love the harvest, but it is nice to hear that you are inspiring a new generation of gardeners! We also have a couple of raised beds for kids in our community garden. I think it is just wonderful to get kids gardening!

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    1. Raised beds are great for kids to introduce gardening.

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  4. Girl Power rocks! It must be quite gratifying to be such an inspiration for them. Your lettuces look really good. I'm sure that you will be rich with lettuce and other veggies before much longer.

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  5. Nice basket of salad you have there. What a great idea for a troop to have their own plot to grow and take to the food bank. Love it!

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    1. They did it last year and had good results. Besides the food pantry they supplied food to the senior housing project. They assumed residents might not be familiar with kale, which was the produce du jour, so they provided a recipe and it was very well received.

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  6. The gardens look great, but your salad looks perfect! Congrats on your first salad!

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  7. Hi! I'm a new follower! I look forward to reading about your gardens this summer. That is really cool that you were able to have an influence on those young girls. Your harvest looks very yummy! Makes me want to have a salad right now, but it's the middle of the night... lol!!!

    Lynn (Suburban Farm Girl)

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  8. Just look at you inspiring young gardeners! You Grow Dave! I bet that week of warm weather coming is going to get your garden up to speed quick. Nice salad.

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